The U.S. Supreme Court decided to ban executions of people who committed death-penalty crimes when they were under the age of 18.
This will put the United States in line with the rest of the civilized world in terms of how the death penalty is applied. Each time an adult sentenced to death (for a crime committed before the age of majority) was executed, the U.S. violated international treaties that it had signed.
This is an important decision and a great victory for the American justice system, but it does not go far enough.
All uses of the death penalty must be abolished. No system is foolproof; many states do not even use DNA testing to verify if they have the right man (or woman) on death row. The states don’t want to spend any money on the people they condemn.
We cannot tolerate a system that may err (and send someone who didn’t do the crime) to their death with NO chance for them to fight back and prove their innocence. That is just plain wrong.
The DNA evidence may well prove that they are guilty too, so shouldn’t we AT LEAST have DNA testing in every case where another person’s life hangs in the balance?
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